In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, America was a vigorous, growing nation, coming of age in a new era of technological and industrial progress, with all the strains and stressors that develop under periods of mass movements and economic growth. Thousands of people flocked to the United States in search of opportunities. Despite domestic challenges and opposition from the wealthiest, Americans were able to rally in favor of reforms including antitrust legislation and increased food and workplace safety standards.

The Sherman and Clayton antitrust acts, two landmark laws from the era, form the cornerstone of the federal government’s enforcement of antitrust policy. Rapid industrialization after the Civil War allowed corporations in sectors such as railroads, oil, steel, and finance to consolidate market control, suppress competition, fix prices, and wield outsized influence over workers and politics. Farmers, small businesses, and labor organizations argued that these practices distorted markets and undermined democratic governance.

But since then, the usage of antitrust law has varied over the last century. In recent decades, federal regulators have gravitated more toward a “laissez-faire” view of antitrust enforcement. This hands-off approach puts the amorphous concept of the “market” at the core of the government’s concerns instead of taking more proactive measures to prevent unfair monopolies.

Decades of lax enforcement when it comes to mergers, combined with rampant offshoring and free trade, have resulted in a handful of large players dominating a wide range of industries. This puts American workers, businesses, and entrepreneurs at a disadvantage.

In December 2025, More Perfect Union, a nonprofit journalism organization that reports through a “class lens,” released a video on the recent struggles of soybean farmers in Arkansas. They’ve not only been squeezed by tariffs, but also more fundamentally by corporate consolidation within the agriculture industry.

To be clear: farmers in America, particularly soybean farmers, have had to grit their teeth throughout our trade battles with China, simply because China was the largest buyer of U.S.-grown soybeans. These are fundamental pressures the agricultural industry will have to balance, an issue that isn’t easily fixable in a world of global competition.

Corporate consolidation, however, is another story. In the same way that the rampant globalization of the last 40 years has hollowed out American towns and manufacturing capability, so too has the relentless march of pro-merger economic philosophies permeated both the Republican and Democratic parties.

The same principle applies to other industries across the United States, even to outsourcing itself. Accruing profit—and maximizing shareholder value—has seemingly become the goal of all corporate decision-making, often at the expense of the communities from which they buy and sell products. This leads to decisions like offshoring labor costs to improve balance sheets or driving up the cost of equipment, goods, or services to report a higher margin. None of this was done with an eye toward how it affects the long-term health of a specific industry, much less the working class.

But American prosperity has never emerged from a small number of companies in the name of efficiency. It has always come from competition. It happens when businesses fight for customers, where workers can move between employers, and where innovation is necessary to survive. Healthy markets require many buyers, many sellers, and real alternatives. When competition is strong, prices stay lower, wages rise, and companies are forced to improve their products and services instead of simply extracting higher profits. The conditions of the late 19th and early 20th centuries in America were the opposite—and the early Progressive movement, the populists of their time, sought to change that, for better or worse.

Nowadays corporate consolidation is often defended as being more efficient, but efficiency for shareholders is not the same as efficiency for the economy. Many of the cost savings promised by mergers do not come from better products or smarter production. They come from suppressing wages, squeezing suppliers, and eliminating competitors. When workers have fewer employers to choose from, their bargaining power disappears. When suppliers face only a handful of buyers, they are forced to accept worse terms. When competition fades, innovation slows. These decisions may improve earnings reports, but they weaken industries over time.

That does not mean every merger is bad. In some industries, particularly those tied to national security, energy, or medical supply, consolidation may help bring production back to the United States or stabilize supply chains that have proven fragile. This resilience matters if we expect American companies to both compete in the global marketplace and return production to our own shores. Where mergers are allowed, policymakers should ensure that multiple firms can still compete instead of placing the entire industry in the hands of one or two dominant players. When companies combine technology or logistics capabilities, the benefits should be shared across the market, not locked behind exclusive systems that shut out competitors.

The benefits of vertical integration can reduce some inefficiencies, but it also creates a new risk: the ability to block competitors from accessing essential inputs or infrastructure. In those cases, integration stops improving efficiency and starts undermining competition. Once those barriers are in place, they are difficult to undo.

Weak competition harms more than individual industries: it hollows out communities, leaving fewer employers and fewer opportunities for local businesses. It creates fragile supply chains that depend on a small number of firms, where a single failure can ripple across the economy. Prices rise not because costs increase, but because consumers and businesses have fewer choices. This shows up in higher grocery bills, fewer options for farmers and small businesses, and an economy increasingly focused on extracting value rather than building it.

Antitrust enforcement is not anti-business on its face; in fact, it is pro-market. A general policy of competition protects innovation for American entrepreneurs and makes small businesses more resilient. We need regulators to enforce antitrust rules. Anti-competitive mergers should be prevented, and if allowed, they should come with clear conditions against price hikes and supply manipulation, and fair access to critical infrastructure.

Antitrust enforcement in the United States must be measured above all else. One fair criticism of the Biden Administration’s Federal Trade Commission was that it sometimes pursued aggressive enforcement without making the strongest possible legal case. That risks court losses that ultimately reinforce consolidation rather than reverse it.

Conservatives, therefore, should not abandon antitrust enforcement. They should pursue it more carefully and more rigorously, ensuring that companies can invest and expand while preventing them from locking up markets and squeezing out competition.

America has faced this problem before. At the turn of the 20th century, the country chose competition over concentration and self-government in the economic sphere over private power. The antitrust laws were practical responses to an economy that had tilted too far toward consolidation. Reclaiming competition today does not require reinventing the system, nor is it about punishing success. It is about restoring balance to the economy so that workers, small businesses, and communities can compete and grow. If the American economy is to remain strong, it must remain competitive, and that requires the political will to act.